News Commentaries, Poetry and Short Stories

Menu

Tag Archives: Chicago teen shot in park

Thursday, I attended a breakfast meeting about Gun Control at a local church here in the western suburbs. There was an impressive turn out of influential Chicago politicians. And I must say I was very impressed that they made time to get together and strategize about the epidemic of crime in our streets.

But I was majorly disappointed that they are determined at continuing with the same old same old, i.e. ‘let’s lock ‘em up.’

Most of our local politicians are continuing with the same strategy of controlling the aftermath of a crime instead of taking the brave and narrow pathway towards coming up with solutions for preventing crime. And those are two totally different things.

Controlling the aftermath is

1. Tougher gun laws. Our state’s attorney general is campaigning hard for this. However, I do SUPPORT her idea that guns should be as traceable as cars. Every gun should have the equivalent of a VIN number. And its owner should have to go through the same process to sell it as he does his car!

2. Long prison sentences.

3. And more of the Three Strikes sentencing that unfortunately our beloved former President Clinton got passed a lot of Black leaders at the time.

Preventing Crime is

1. Jobs, Jobs, and more Jobs

2. A rollback in education to the basics. By that I mean teaching our children to read, write, and do arthrimatic. I guarantee if you ask a young child what arthrimatic is they wouldn’t be able to tell you.

3. Teaching our children Hone Economics — how to read a bus schedule, balance a checkbook, make a grocery list and how to go grocery shopping without a Link Card, and what a budget is and how it can help you get what you want.

4. Teaching shop. (Car repair, computer repair, etc.) I know we don’t repair things anymore. We throw away the old and buy a new whatever.

But maybe our schools could teach Cashiering (Walmart is the No. 1 employer in the United States) Food Service Workers (McDonalds is the second largest employer), Home Healthcare Workers (a field that is expected to grow as Baby Boomers age), and how to dress to get an Administrative Assistant job in a Downtown office.

5. Teaching our young men to respect women. (Remember Tipper Gore and her warnings about those music videos.)

6. Teaching our young women to respect themselves. Women get married and have children. Stop the Baby Daddy bullshit. Marry the man.

Sometimes the wisest thing you can do as a blogger is know when to shut up.

Last week I wanted to sit down at my computer and start pounding away at what I thought was the best course of action in the Hadiya Pendleton case. But out of respect for the teen’s family I decided no way. Don’t add to the drama.

However, as a writer and as the auntie and former teacher of teenage girls, I had an idea about what had transpired.

Both of my eyebrows were raised in suspicion when I heard that the girl had gone to the park after school. Why?

1. Because is was cold that day and

2. I’m sure – with all the gun violence in Chicago – Hadiya’s parents had told her to come straight home after school.

So, instead of chasing some nameless – faceless person with a gun who just randomly shot at a bunch of teenagers hanging out in the park, I would have sat myself down and had a good close look at her girlfriends. I would have asked myself

1. Which one of them might have been jealous of Hadiya’s success?

2. Which one of them might have ties to someone in a gang or who had access to a gun?

3. And which one of them had enough influence with Hadiya to convince her to defy her parent’s orders about going straight home after school?

Jealousy, even though we think it’s outdated and outmoded, still ranks as the number one reason for most actions taken by teenage girls. And most teenagers – boys and girls – are adept at taking life long damning actions over seemingly petty issues.

Well, now you know why I never became a Policewoman. I’m just do damn suspicious.